Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Like Jamie, I couldn't be happier about our home and the area we moved to. For me, the move here is a little different. I'm just a half an hour from my parents now and in the general area where I grew up. It is just enough outside that area though that things are new and exciting and it has been wonderful experiencing it all with Jamie.

I'm writing a general update from the past 6 months so I can look back on them a few years down the road.AUGUST
We closed on the house on the 22nd and then cleaned with my mom and dad for the day. The next day we moved everything from storage with help from mom and dad, Uncle Rod and Aunt Judy, John, and Michael and kids. Then the unpacking began!

SEPTEMBER
9/2: We had to put our sweet Nordi down. We were glad he got to spend some time in our new home though. He was an amazing cat. I wish we had more than 3 1/2 years with him, but I'm so glad that his old man years with us.

9/3: We went to Bangor Humane society and picked out Bou! She came home on the 9th. It took 9 days for Bou and The Cheat to co-habitate in the same room. They are now great friends and spend a lot of time chasing one another through the house. She has cute little mews and gained 2 pounds in 2 weeks after we got her. Now she's our little meatball... 3 pounds later.

9/4: My family came out for a house warming gathering. My brother had flown in from Los Angeles as a surprise! It was a sunny afternoon of eating, playing horseshoes, and shooting hoops.

9/18: I started some apple cider vinegar with apples from our trees.

OCTOBER

The front porch was in desperate need of painting. It was a dark mustard yellow color. We decided to sand it up and paint it red. The paint was in such rough shape and the sanding took a lot longer than we thought. With some help from my mom and dad, we got it finished just as it was getting too cold to paint.

(still have the floor to go in this photo)

With some hard thinking we figured out how to get the heat mat under the stove!

NOVEMBER

Jamie got the bird feeders up! The cats love watching them.

11/24: Our First Thanksgiving in our new home! We had a great day with mom and dad.

DECEMBER

We decorated for the first time. And cut down our tree from the tree farm right down the road. Jamie's mom and brother came for Christmas. His mom didn't know his brother was flying in amking it quite the fun surprise!!

12/25: Our power went out on Christmas morning around 10:00 AM. Fortunately, the wood cookstove was already up and running. We slid the turkey from the oven into the wood oven. We were cooking it in homemade turkey broth, so I think that helped keep it moist. We rotated it every half hour and quickly learned we needed to keep it well covered with tinfoil. It was hands down, the best turkey I've ever cooked. The meat was so moist and had an amazing flavor.

Thanks to our propane stove were were able to continue to cook other Christmas dishes stovetop and use the cookstove top also. My parents had fortuitously given us 2 cast iron pans for Christmas, so we put them right to use! It was a fun challenge to do everything with the limited amount of water left in the pipes and what was leftover in the teakettle.

After dinner, Jamie rinsed out the dishes in the snow. It will be a Christmas we'll never forget!

JANUARY

1/14: I started some sauerkraut thanks to the leftover cabbage from Airline Brewing Company!